House Rules

                  The Duck Blind was a good bar in a tricky place. Four miles north on Rural Route 15, it didn’t lend to driving home after kicking back a few, even if the curves slowed all traffic down. Hank, the owner, had arranged a taxi-van to show up every midnight, and that helped half the potential problem. Those not living south would have to figure out their own returns, and more-or-less they did.

                  Roger lived a mile-and-a-half northeast. He’d often run to this hangout for a little exercise, then jog or walk or hitch a ride back, depending. The guys at the bar always joked when he came in: “Hey it’s Bannister back! Trying to break the 3-minute barrier tonight?”

                  “No, today I rode my bike. Nothing wrong with a change of routine, now is there?”

                  “When’d you get a bike, Roger?”

                  “A month or so ago, at Millie’s insistence. We were at the Costco and she saw ’em on sale—”

                  “You bought your bike at Costco?” Jake frowned, fiercely Main Street.

                  “Hell, I didn’t even want it. Millie said she was afraid of too much strain on my knees, running like I do.”

                  “And why do you do?” Martha wanted to know. She was sort of Jake’s sweetheart, unofficial.

                  “Why do I run?” Roger asked her back, as if it were all so obvious. “You hadn’t yet moved here when I told this not so long ago—maybe five, six years. It happened when Millie and me were livin’ in the town, retirement nippin’ at our heels. I went out with the dog in the morning—chilly and dark, neither of us up for any hike—and I saw a neighbor’s car idling; well it was Paula Jenkins’ car, precisely, and this is when she had a baby girl—Pamela, I think.”

                  “No, Pammy’s already working at the Stop-&-Go. I think you’re talking about her sister Piper,” Hank put in, reflecting his knowledge of the populace.

                  “Yeah, bet I am. Anyway, Paula had her car warming up, the little girl in the back booster seat, and she goes into the house for something. I’m already a half-block down when I hear Paula scream and I turn around to see a guy closing himself into the driver’s seat.”

                  “Where did he come from?” Martha asked.

                  “Vagrant. Found out later he’d been waiting in the bushes across the street. Snow tracks gave it away. So anyways, I run towards Paula’s house and the car zips away, a bit challenged by the ice. Well, me too, and the dog. But we get to Paula and she’s beside herself, of course, and I say—”

                  “Thinking on your feet!”

                  “I know you heard this, Hank—am I telling it right?”

                  “Just love that line. Go on, Bannister.”

                  “So I say, thinking on my feet, ‘Call the cops and come back outside. I’m gonna run this way’—and I’m pointing down Berryville Lane—because I know he’ll need to swing around the peninsula there to get to Highway 27, no matter north or south. So I sprint Berryville about a quarter mile, and I’m hearing Paula’s car comin’, as expected, and wasn’t sure what to do next.”

                  “Couldn’t you take the license plate number?” Jake posed as a possible joke.

                  “No, wasn’t interested in that. How do you stop a grand theft auto? Only thing on my mind.”

                  “With a kid in the back seat—”

                  “Yeah—that’s what raised the stakes. So I bid my dog a ‘see ya later’ sort of wave and slid myself to a stop in the middle of the road. Dumb dog follows and probably saves my life. The guy looked raged enough to plow over me but then had second thoughts when he saw Marmaduke—”

                  “That’s not the name of your dog!” Jake laughed, “you got a little one, a springer spaniel.”

                  “Now I do.” Roger reminded, “Got her a couple years ago. Marmaduke was my last town dog. Died that day when the maniac thief swerved and hit him instead of me.”

                  “Oh my God,” Martha put it together. “So the car was aimin’ for you, the dog there, too; it swerves and the dog jumps at it to accomplish the goal.”

                  “Exactly. He’s big as a caribou and the car also dies on the spot. The thief tumbles out and starts to run. I check the little girl who’s sleeping through the whole ordeal—”

                  “Sure on that?” Hank gibed.

                  “Ask her about it next time you see her. And so I take off running after the guy.”

                  “You’re sixty-some years old!”

                  “Seventy, now. But who’s counting? I just wanted to get the guy. And he gave it a good chase—probably made the tactical error of running up the highway for the better traction, which helped me just as much. And, half mile later when I tackled him, the cop comes by that Paula called, and—well, that’s why I run.”

                  “But what about Marmaduke?” Martha wanted to know.

                  “I say it about every well-raised dog. It may save a life someday, not that he had to lose his own…. Buried him behind the police station, at their request.”

***

                  Millie was pretty used to Roger’s routines. Second marriage for both of them, she hadn’t had any dog experience before Marmaduke, and that death devastated her. They moved to a lovely lake house way out in the sticks—not ‘nowhere’ for the patrons of The Duck Blind—and after a lot of Roger’s begging and promises, she relented on his hope to have another dog.

                  “Runs just aren’t same without a running mate,” Roger contended.

                  “Just don’t bring her close to busy roads,” Millie stipulated.

                  “We’ll name her ‘Homer’ to ensure she’ll guide me home.”

                  “Why not ‘Sappho’? Seems that would be the better fit.”

                  So they named the puppy that, baptizing her in the lake to affirm her nature as a water dog. “She may save a life someday,” Roger almost didn’t want to proffer. “Let’s hope it’s only hypothetical.”

***

                  When grandkids came to visit, the mood went from happy to ecstatic—the blessings of a rounded life. The lake was pure for every season: spring for canoeing, summer for swimming, autumn for twilight fishing, winter for ice skating, and the forest echoed everything a wanderer could want. There weren’t many house rules, but one Millie and Roger barely had to negotiate: no wifi where unnecessary—they had a landline feeding their PC—so leave the dagnab iDevices in the city: you came out here to congregate with nature.

                  No one disagreed. There were plenty of games and books for rainy days, billiards beneath a ping-pong table, a hot tub, tire swing, and grass running to the sand and moss beneath the trees. A post horn with a rubber bulb was used to call across the lake, telling it was time to come in. Grandkids rarely went that far alone, but Millie sometimes used it to reign in Roger.

                  The Duck Blind had a little store adjoined for fishing tackle, survival gear and basic groceries. One bike—not Roger’s—had a basket on it, and if Millie was down a loaf of bread, for instance, she’d ask a grandkid to take the backroad and then be careful on the final stretch of highway. Of course they had a car and used it for trips into the town, but for a grandkid big enough, the chance to bike to The Duck Blind carried a sense of awe and responsibility.

                  Though their names were Elizabeth, Jeremy, and Cameron, Roger liked the ring of ‘Vera, Chuck and Dave’—singing that reference instead of searching iTunes to prove it was a thing when he was young. Vera and Chuck were from one side of the state and Dave from the other, so their parents often coordinated when the cousins could get together. This particular weekend in autumn, though, only Dave could come as Millie was in the area anyway to pick him up, and Roger would drive him back on Tuesday, a good reason to miss a couple days of 2^nd grade.

                  Dave was the youngest of the three but most progressive in the art of boating and hiking. His house rule in particular was to come inside more often, or at least to tell where he was going. He enjoyed when Grams or Gramps accompanied him outside, but also had an innate need to explore on his own. Roger would bike with him to pick up groceries and visit with whomever was at the bar. “Root beer, Dave?” he’d ask, and clarify to Hank another without the ‘root’.

                  “Whatcha gonna hunt here this weekend, Davy Crockett?” Jake asked him.

                  “Oh, I dunno,” Dave replied. “Maybe a muskrat.”

                  “A muskrat?”

                  “Yes, I saw him swimming across the lake.”

                  “You did, did’ja?”

                  “Ask Grandpa. I saw it first, but then showed him.”

                  “That’s true,” Roger rogered. “Doin’ the backstroke, I think.”

                  “No,” Dave corrected. “He dived a lot and then peeked to see how far he got.”

                  “Hey,” Martha said, “you catch him and I’ll cook him up for a good stew.”

                  “Eww!”

                  “No kidding. They’re delicious. A rare treat on Ash Wednesday.”

                  “I just wanna find its den and watch it for a while.”

                  “Good on ya, Dave. Woods can use more watchers.” Hank slid him an ice cream bar to let Roger have another beer.

***

                  Roger’s rowboat had a splintering backboard where a motor could mount—and he had that motor in the garage—but he preferred not to use it. Alone or with Millie, he’d canoe around the lake and usually cast a trolling spoon to catch a Northern pike “the lazy way,” he joked at the bar, “to save my arm for softball season.” With grandkids he liked rowing the boat and having a chance to drop anchor, cast toward the lily pads, worry less about Sappho balancing on a seat.

                  “Why doesn’t she need a life jacket, Grandpa?” Dave asked, probably in hopes he’d also be exempt someday.

                  “Sappho? Well,” Roger deliberately adjusted his own life jacket as if he were going into a business meeting. “She’s a water dog, born to fetch ducks if I ever had a mind to shoot any—”

                  “How come you don’t hunt, ’specially if you got Sappho?”

                  “No good reason, I s’pose. I eat meat like most folks who go to Costco… or The Duck Blind, for that matter. I’d be responsible for a gun, if I had one. Just that… I like the sports that don’t have much equipment: running, swimming.”

                  “You like softball—you told Hank that.”

                  “Yep, and that has its share of equipment. Guess I don’t have a sound answer for you, Dave, ’cept that pulling a trigger on an animal just ain’t in my blood.” His pole, as if responding, bent instantly like a ‘J’—a clean strike from a feisty pike. “Get the net ready, Dave, this feels like a keeper,” and, after an exciting fight, Roger and Dave teamed efficiently to get the five-pounder into the boat. “Good job, Buddy, you really learned the technique!”

                  “It’s huge, Grandpa!”

                  “It’s a nice size.” Roger managed to unhook the double treble from its inner gills despite the constant flapping. “Yeah, she’s a beaut. But,” holding it up for second thoughts, “could contribute more to the lake than in our freezer.” He lowered the fish tail first into the water, then leveled it just below the surface with both hands, gently swishing the head to reestablish the flow through its gills. A second or two of rest after releasing his hands, and the pike shot off to the haven of the lily pads.

                  “Did you do that because you said you didn’t like to hunt?”

                  Roger smiled. “Probably somewhat on my conscience. With fishing you can do that, but not really with a rifle. Anyway, let’s let that pike grow another year older, and maybe we’ll find some ice cream in the freezer instead.”

***

                  Millie enjoyed retirement as a banker yet still worked in the municipal library on a part-time basis, and though a day off for Dave would have stood to reason, she was slated to introduce a visiting scholar for their ‘Monday Meanderings’ series open to all the local book clubs. Last month was on Alice Munro, and Millie encouraged Roger to come; a sample from ‘Nettles’ compelled him to buy that collection of short stories. He’d be game for today’s lecture on the poet A.E. Housman, but didn’t think Dave would sit through it patiently.

                  “You got muskrats to monitor, instead,” Millie reminded Roger, with subtle inflection to keep a good eye on Dave.

                  “That’s right! Planning to do that right after lunch.”

                  “Can’t it be earlier, Grandpa?”

                  “It’s a little gray now, threatening rain. S’posed to clear up by noon.”

                  “That sounds well worth the wait,” Millie endorsed, and kissed both of them before driving to town.

                  It occurred to her an hour later, after xeroxing poems the lecturer wanted to reference—‘Terence, this is stupid stuff’ on page one to troubleshoot the tone—that she should have pulled out the package of ground beef from the freezer. She reached in her purse for her cell phone to remind Roger, yet couldn’t find it there. “Forgot it again, impish contrivance,” she mumbled. “Boys’ll probably fish something out, nonetheless.”

                   Almost telepathically, Roger realized the same and let Dave cast from the dock, as long as he was careful to not hook Sappho. “I need to bike to The Duck Blind for some frozen pizzas—does that sound ok?”

                  “Yep.” Dave replied, and cast the daredevil spoon as expertly as he could.

                  “You’re getting good at that—practice makes perfect. Now if it starts to drizzle, be sure to get inside.”

                  “Yep.”

                  Roger didn’t linger at the little store, but the biking on the back road was more challenging than he anticipated, muddy from a night of rain. ‘Should have run it,’ he thought. ‘Wouldn’t be any slower than I’m currently going.’

                  He got home and washed off his boots with a hose by the garage, then went in to preheat the oven. He checked the clock to see that ‘Monday Meanderings’ was due to start in a half-hour, so perhaps this would be the time to give Millie a call, just to say that he improvised for lunch. He dialed her number but was confused at the way it was ringing—loud enough into the earpiece, then quiet, then loud in quick succession. Not a busy signal, but…; walking around, he found that he was phoning within the house an absent Millie, and chuckled at such circular logic. He placed both phones on the counter and then the pizzas upon the oven rack. The timer set for 15 minutes, Roger proceeded to make some tall Arnold Palmers as a healthier alternative to root beers.

                  Thinking, though, that Dave might have caught a fish by now, Roger suspended his preparations and hoped they could be joyfully in vain. He slid the screen door to the deck to assess progress and saw no presence of the boy or dog. “Dave?” he called out into the house, downstairs and up. “Sappho?” a little louder. Outside he checked the hot tub first, then the shore and where the boats were pulled and turned over in their resting state. His shouts became more forceful, and he knew that running back to get the post horn wouldn’t likely make a louder effect, but he did so anyway. Throwing it down in a panic, he started running around the lake, taking a clockwise route that went past hunting stands which the kids used as tree forts. Roger climbed up each and bellowed as loud as his gasping breath would let him. Any neighbors around the lake were cabin-owners, long gone this time of year. They all had his number in case anything went wrong, but the proposition was rarely reciprocal, as Roger fleetingly realized, running deeper into the wilderness.

                  He knew from yesterday’s fishing where the muskrat lived: a push-up of sticks and mud an Olympic long jump from the shore on the far side of the lake. Fearing that somehow Dave had burrowed inside, Roger leaped into the moat and pulled himself to the mound, scratching at the braided sticks that scratched his hands and face in kind. Despondently he waded from the futile mess, shook the mire from his reeking pants, and continued running on.

                 

***

                  Sappho found him about three hundred yards from making a full circle of the lake. Both looked haggard and not enough relieved. “Where’s Dave?” was answered with barks equally sharp, and Sappho was clearly frustrated when Roger took the final curve to the house, yelled within it and all around the property and shore. Sappho kept barking from the path they had come from, and Roger finally understood her point, running yet again where she led.

                  The trail went south of the lake and disappeared into the woods; Sappho ran directly through them toward a gravel road, looking back to ensure her old owner was keeping up. He knew this road but rarely ran it, even as it came to Rural Route 15 just south of The Duck Blind. And figuring that Sappho wanted to lead him there, Roger sprinted with a second wind and prayers that Dave had wandered off at least to find such a safe house.

                  “Hey, been trying to call you,” Hank exclaimed, coming round the bar to see that Roger was alright. “Looks like you’ve been through a swamp! Now get on in here and warm up. Jake drove out to your place cuz no one was answering your phones. Davy’s here in the kitchen, with Martha—”

                  “Doin’ what?” Roger begged, short of breath.

                  “C’mon on back,” Hank held him by the shoulders. “He’s fine, if you’re worried. Wanted to surprise you.”

                  “He done a crack job o’ that!”

                  Hank beckoned to Martha, who recognized Roger’s panic. “Dave, your grandpa’s here and looks like he’s been running mule’s miles to find you.”

                  Dave stepped out behind her with bloody gloves on, the same as Martha wore. Roger dashed over to hug him despite his utter confusion. “What in tarnation have you been up to, Dave?”

                  “I’m sorry, Grandpa. I should have told you.”

                  “Damn right you shoulda! What’s with this display?”
                  “I think he means the muskrat, Davy,” Martha turned to him. “Tell him how you found it.”

                  Dave was scared it wouldn’t come out well, yet more at ease when Sappho approached and sniffed that he was safe. He took off his gloves to scratch behind her ears. “Sappho tried to save the muskrat, who’s over here right now.”

                  “DOA,” Martha codified, “we’re skinning for the meat while it’s fresh.”

                  “I don’t understand—‘save the muskrat’? Sappho?”

                  “While I was casting from the dock, an eagle came from over this side of the lake,” motioning to his right. “It went down fast into the water and pulled out the muskrat, which we didn’t even notice before that. Sappho ran fast down the trail and barked, and the eagle was kind of fighting and flapping its wings, starting to fly, but—”

                  “You saw all this?” Roger pressed, “while I was in the house?”

                  “Must’ve been while you were buying pizzas,” Hank deduced.

                  “I thought you came here to this place, Grandpa, so I ran after Sappho who jumped into the lake, and I couldn’t see how it happened, but I guess the eagle dropped the muskrat and Sappho was able to get it.”

                  “Well, then, how did you get hold of it?”

                  “I wanted to see if it was dead.”

                  “Now you know, Dave, not to touch dead things. And what if it were still kickin’? A bite from a rodent could give you disease.”

                  Losing his brave face, Dave was about to cry. “I…I’m sorry. Jus’ wanted…”

                  “There, now. Don’t take it so hard. You carried it by the tail?”

                  “Ye—y—yeah. Li—ike you do—with a pike.”

                  “Okay—different reasons maybe, but I’m proud you made the connection.” Roger held him tight, pursing a smile at the spectacle they made.

                  “And I’m proud,” Hank added, “you took the back road to avoid the highway.”

                  Just then, Jake burst in and rifled a look at Roger. “Good Lord, glad you’re here—but how come I didn’t see you.”

                  “Took the back road. Learning from my grandson,” he shrugged, breathing back to normal.

                  “Well it was really Sappho,” Dave said, also back to normal.

***

                  Millie, meanwhile, had come home with no knowledge of these prodigal sons and was greeted, instead, by the smell of smoke stemming from an open oven. It had been turned off and the charcoal discs inside posed no danger, but she was no less anxious about why this would be so. She saw the two cell phones on the counter and realized she’d wouldn’t be able to contact Roger that way, so she began running around the property, hollering their names. She found the post horn lying on the decking and squeezed the bulb as snappily as she could. She looked out long on the lake, noting the boats in the landing and fishing tackle on the dock. The images blurred with desperate imagination.

                  She knew there was no time for this: thoughts of the Munich Olympics complicated things, as she couldn’t shake today’s lecture away. When the hostages there were shot dead, and Jim McKay reported to a nonplussed world, he followed with a Housman elegy, ‘To an Athlete Dying Young’. Millie hated the conflation of then and now, known and unknown, and why the poem crashed into these pragmatics. “Man and boy stood cheering by / As home we brought you shoulder high”—she crumbled at this curtailed hope.

                  Sappho’s bark astounded her, coming from the driveway and bursting through the house, muddying it with paws Millie would have washed as policy. No time for that, though, as they kissed a quick relief. Sappho circled back toward where she came, using canine logic that another run to The Duck Blind was exactly what Millie would do. But how was she to know where Sappho wanted to lead? She couldn’t corral such guidance into the car, so grabbed a bicycle to help her keep the pace.

                  Roger met her at the threshold, hearing Sappho’s happy voice. They didn’t dwell on the absurdities, even when her jaw dropped at seeing her grandson tenderize the muskrat meat. Martha assured her all was in good hands, and dinner should be here tonight. Jake seconded that opinion: “those pizzas looked well done, but….” Millie assented that this would bring nice closure to Dave’s visit, and that he learned, among other lessons, how to handle home away from home away from home. “The Duck Blind is exactly that, Davy Crockett,” Jake declared, “Ain’t it, Hank?”

                  “You guys make it so.”

***

                  A week later, to localize the ‘Monday Meanderings’ when the library had nothing on offer, Millie asked Hank if she could recite some poems at The Duck Blind. “Nothing much, maybe just a few between jukebox tunes.”

                  “Ain’t rules on what sounds waft about this place,” Hank said, “and we can use a few new lyrics.”

                  “Well, mostly from a hundred years ago. Wanted to recycle A.E. Housman.”

                  “Sounds good for the environment!”

                  Because one of those poems was entitled ‘Eight O’Clock’, she started then. “Meant to be morning, and on the tolling of an execution to be had, but—”

                  “You’re not planning to kill Roger, I hope,” Jake ribbed.

                  “On the contrary—I wanted these poems to be heard to keep us more alive—maybe that’s your cue, Dear.”

                  Roger stood up and cleared his throat. “‘Is my team plowing’,” he announced, “by Alfred Edward Housman.” He read with spirit and appreciation for having friends to listen. Tom and Ernie had stopped their pool game, and Jessica and Florence fetched Martha from the kitchen. Hank and Jake and Terry and Janice and Smitty and Geraldine filled out the circle, and others in the booths listened, too. Millie took the next one for her practice in inflections, introducing ‘Terence, this is stupid stuff’ and reading to its true effect. Hank, convivial, reminded the room that “ale’s the stuff to drink / For fellows whom it hurts to think,” and on the house gave a round of that on tap.

                  Then Millie followed with the piece that got the whole idea going, along with how she felt last week in the confusion of Munich terror on her very deck. She said so not to make an ill-advised equivalency, but for how the poetry of Housman had its place. She read out, slowly, ‘To an Athlete Dying Young’, and let that settle for a moment before continuing. “My own pastiche I wrote a couple days ago, and Roger, it’s for you. The title tells of fortune beyond fate, ‘To an Athlete Living Old’:

                 

In time, you ran your ageless race

To leave our grandkids fears to face:

Heart attacks affect us all,

Regardless who’s the one to fall.

Seasons show the paths to take

And when, unseen, the means to make

Your journey as it will be known

By grandkids following, full-grown.

The dogs you’ve taken in your stride

Have turned the leash into a guide,

Esteemed to be the first defense,

Faithful to the end they sense,

Their eyes may close yet surely see:

Athlete you still strive to be.

If others feel the world’s too old,

Impel the dust to sparkle gold.”

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2017)